On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 7:40:00 PM UTC-6, slider wrote:
> I have lost count of how many times recently I have to had to explain the
> meaning of the English term “straw man” to my European allies. That is
> because the best living, breathing “straw man” at the moment is the
> Kremlin’s claim to be under threat from NATO. In recent weeks the Russian
> Defence Minister’s comment that the US is “preparing a provocation with
> chemical components in eastern Ukraine” has made that “straw man” even
> bigger.
>
> It is obviously the Kremlin’s desire that we all engage with this bogus
> allegation, instead of challenging the real agenda of the President of the
> Russian Federation. An examination of the facts rapidly puts a match to
> the allegations against NATO.
>
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/an-article-by-the-defence-secretary-on-the-situation-in-ukraine
>
> First, NATO is, to its core, defensive in nature. At the heart of the
> organisation is Article 5 that obliges all members to come to the aid of a
> fellow member if it is under attack. No ifs and no buts. Mutual
> self-defence is NATO’s cornerstone. This obligation protects us all.
> Allies from as far apart as Turkey and Norway; or as close as Latvia and
> Poland all benefit from the pact and are obliged to respond. It is a truly
> defensive alliance.
>
> Second, former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but
> joined at their own request. The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a
> Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality the growth in
> Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own
> malign activities and threats.
>
> Third, the allegation that NATO is seeking to encircle the Russian
> Federation is without foundation. Only five of the thirty allies neighbour
> Russia, with just 1/16th of its borders abutted by NATO. If the definition
> of being surrounded is 6% of your perimeter being blocked then no doubt
> the brave men who fought at Arnhem or Leningrad in the Second World War
> would have something strong to say about it.
>
> It is not the disposition of NATO forces but the appeal of its values that
> actually threatens the Kremlin. Just as we know that its actions are
> really about what President Putin’s interpretation of history is and his
> unfinished ambitions for Ukraine.
>
> We know that because last summer he published, via the official Government
> website, his own article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and
> Ukrainians”. I urge you to read it, if you have time, because while it is
> comprehensive on his arguments it is short on accuracy and long on
> contradictions.
>
> We should all worry because what flows from the pen of President Putin
> himself is a seven-thousand-word essay that puts ethnonationalism at the
> heart of his ambitions. Not the narrative now being peddled. Not the straw
> man of NATO encroachment. It provides the skewed and selective reasoning
> to justify, at best, the subjugation of Ukraine and at worse the forced
> unification of that sovereign country.
>
> President Putin’s article completely ignores the wishes of the citizens of
> Ukraine, while evoking that same type of ethnonationalism which played out
> across Europe for centuries and still has the potential to awaken the same
> destructive forces of ancient hatred. Readers will not only be shocked at
> the tone of the article but they will also be surprised at how little NATO
> is mentioned. After all, is NATO ‘expansionism’ not the fountain of all
> the Kremlin’s concerns? In fact, just a single paragraph is devoted to
> NATO.
>
> The essay makes in it three claims. One: that the West seeks to use
> division to “rule” Russia. Two: that anything other than a single nation
> of Great Russia, Little Russia and White Russia (Velikorussians,
> Malorussians, Belorussians) in the image advanced in the 17th Century is
> an artificial construct and defies the desires of a single people, with a
> single language and church. Third, that anyone who disagrees does so out
> of a hatred or phobia of Russia.
>
> We can dispense with the first allegation. No one wants to rule Russia. It
> is stating the obvious that just like any other state it is for the
> citizens of a country to determine their own future. Russia’s own lessons
> from such conflicts as Chechnya must surely be that ethnic and sectarian
> conflicts cost thousands of innocent lives with the protagonists getting
> bogged down in decades of strife.
>
> As for Ukraine, Russia itself recognised the sovereignty of it as an
> independent country and guaranteed its territorial integrity, not just by
> signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 but also its Friendship Treaty
> with Ukraine itself in 1997. Yet it is the Kremlin not the West that set
> about magnifying divisions in that country and several others in the
> Europe. It has been well documented the numerous efforts of the GRU and
> other Russian agencies to interfere in democratic elections and domestic
> disputes is well documented. The divide and rule cap sits prettiest on
> Moscow’s head not NATO’s.
>
> Probably the most important and strongly believed claim that Ukraine is
> Russia and Russia is Ukraine is not quite as presented. Ukraine has been
> separate from Russia for far longer in its history than it was ever
> united. Secondly the charge that all peoples in Belarus, Russia and
> Ukraine are descendants of the ‘Ancient Rus’ and are therefore somehow all
> Russians. But in reality, according to historian Professor Andrew Wilson
> in his excellent essay for RUSI entitled “Russia and Ukraine: ‘One People’
> as Putin Claims?” they are at best “kin but not the same people”. In the
> same way Britain around 900AD consisted of Mercia, Wessex, York,
> Strathclyde and other pre-modern kingdoms, but it was a civic nation of
> many peoples, origins and ethnicities that eventually formed the United
> Kingdom.
>
> If you start and stop your view of Russian history between 1654 and 1917
> then you can fabricate a case for a more expansive Russia, perhaps along
> the lines of the motto of the Russian Tsar before the Russian Empire
> “Sovereign of all of Rus: the Great, the Little, and the White” – Russia,
> Ukraine and Belarus respectively. And crucially you must also forget the
> before and after in history. You must ignore the existence of the Soviet
> Union, breaking of the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty, and the
> occupation of Crimea. Far more than footnotes in history, I am sure you
> will agree.
>
> Ironically, President Putin himself admits in his essay that “things
> change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part
> of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of
> reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a
> separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is
> only one answer: with respect!” However, he then goes on to discard some
> of those “historical circumstances” to fit his own claims..
>
> Dubious to say the least, and not in anyway a perspective that justifies
> both the occupation of Crimea (in the same way Russia occupied Crimea in
> 1783 in defiance of the Russo-Turkish Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774)
> or any further invasion of modern Ukraine, as an independent sovereign
> country.
>
> The last charge against the West by many in the Russian Government is that
> those who disagree with the Kremlin are somehow Russophobes. Leaving aside
> that GRU officers deployed nerve agents on British streets or that cyber
> hacking and targeted assassinations emanate from the Russian state,
> nothing could be further than the truth.
>
> Russia and the UK share a deep and often mutually beneficial history. Our
> allegiances helped to finally defeat Napoleon and later Hitler. Outside of
> conflict, across the centuries we shared technology, medicine and culture..
> During the 18th Century Russia and Britain were deeply tied. Between 1704
> to 1854, from age of Peter the Great through Catherine the Great and well
> into the 19th Century the British were to be found as admirals, generals,
> surgeons, and architects at the highest level of the Russian Court. The
> father of the Russian Navy – one Samuel Greig – was born in Inverkeithing
> in Fife.
>
> That shared admiration is still true today. The British Government is not
> in dispute with Russia and the Russian people – far from it – but it does
> take issue with the malign activity of the Kremlin.
>
> So, if one cold January or February night Russian Military forces once
> more cross into sovereign Ukraine, ignore the ‘straw man’ narratives and
> ‘false flag’ stories of NATO aggression and remember the President of
> Russia’s own words in that essay from last summer. Remember it and ask
> yourself what it means, not just for Ukraine, but for all of us in Europe..
> What it means the next time…

I would like for him to do a better job of informing Russia
I already know

mk5000

Memorizing him was as easy as knowing all the words to your old favorite song
Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer

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